Students Trek to Boston Tech Companies

Bowdoin Career Planning’s Todd Herrmann took a group of students to Boston to visit technology companies and meet with Bowdoin alumni in the 7th annual Bowdoin Tech Trek. The idea for the trek originally stemmed from Sean Marsh ’95 and Andy Palmer ’88, who wanted to help expose students to Bowdoin’s connection to the entrepreneurial and tech scene in Boston, according to Herrmann.

This semester, a few days before Thanksgiving break, students spent a day visiting Tamr, Wayfair, LogMeIn, RaizLabs, and MassChallenge. They also attended a class at Harvard Business School taught by Bob White ’77, a College trustee. White is a senior lecturer in Harvard Business School’s Entrepreneurial Management Unit. While at Harvard, the Bowdoin group ran in to Karen Mills, who was the former head of the U.S. Small Business Administration, and Eric Edelman ’13. Mills is married to Barry Mills, Bowdoin’s president from 2001 to 2015.

At each of the stops, alumni spoke to the student about how they have navigated the path from Bowdoin to a career in business or technology. “At Tamr we were treated to a few moments inspiration from founder, Andy Palmer ’88,” Herrmann said, and to lunch — a welcome perk. The panel at Tamr, organized by Kelsey Cole ’11, was moderated and led by Rori Cremer ’11, and included Mingo Sanchez ’17, Clara Belitz ’17, and Sam Roberts ’14.

At the Wayfair office, the students heard from more alumni — Elizabeth Maybank ’12, Rebecca Perry ’07, Andrew Klegman ’13, and Chris Granata ’14 — who are working across the company in engineering, business analytics, human capital analytics, and data science.

At LogMeIn, Jeremy Segal ’92 spoke about his job overseeing the merger between LogMeIn and Citrix Go-to Meeting. Robert ‘Tommy’ Garry ’17 was also at hand. Alumni from Raizlabs and MassChallenge joined the group, too. “We were treated to a view of app development through the eyes of RaizLabs from Samantha Broccoli ’15 and Yowon Yoon ’14,” Herrmann said.

Robby Bitting ’11 was the final speaker, telling the story of MassChallenge and the more than 100 startups working under the accelerator’s leadership.